


Case 7922409 - The Woman In White.

by Pitseleh



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Murder, Statement Fic, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 17:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18833647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pitseleh/pseuds/Pitseleh
Summary: Statement of a woman who refused to give her name, regarding a violent incident taking place in Paris. Original statement given September 24th, 1792. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.





	Case 7922409 - The Woman In White.

Statement of a woman who refused to give her name, regarding a violent incident taking place in Paris. Original statement given September 24th, 1792. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. 

Statement begins.

___

I do not know why you are here. You don't belong here. This city is not for your kind anymore. I know you are trying to blend in, but I know my own. We all do, now. Paris is a new city. We will usher in a new world. That world is not for you, with your fancy buckles-- yes! That is how I know you are an impostor! A rich man always has good shoes, even when he thinks he is dressing like those he despises. You see this dirt under my nails? Once, I was ashamed. Now, I feel pride! The world is for us, now. People from your country as well, but _not_ you. They work in the shops and the fields, they do not take a holiday to a foreign country so they can steal stories.

You said you would pay for mine, and I spit on it. My story is mine. I do not have much, but I have my memories, my stories, the stories Papa told us at night to distract us from the cold. You can not buy it and own it. I will tell you to spite you. I will do the thing you people do not understand. I will take what I have, what you do not have, and I will _share_.

 

You want to know about the Princess? I will tell you of her. Of course you want to know about her. The world is changing, but you want to know about the rich, still. I will tell you of her, yes. I have made my promise, and unlike your kind, I will keep it. But the story does not start with us, waiting outside the gates, handling traitors. It is my story. It begins with me.

I was not born in Paris, you know. I came here when Papa died. My brother Emil brought us, myself, my sisters and my other brothers. He was the oldest left alive. 

I remember little of my Papa except the stories. We lived on the estate of a rich man who believed he owned the land, as though the creations of Holy God could be kept in a velvet pocket. We did not live in his estate. We lived _on_ it. We worked the land. My brothers and sisters and parents and I would do whatever duties required of us, and if we did not, someone would come to beat us. And sometimes, they would beat us if we did. My mother did not have time to care for her children, so she would take twine and tie the youngest to nearby trees while she made beer and bread. We were like animals.

I do not remember my mother much. She died of some illness a long time ago. My Papa is hazy in my mind as well, but I remember his stories. He said they were the stories his Papa told him, and his Papa's Papa, and so on as far back as I could remember. They were our inheritance. That is why they are ours. They are mine, just as this story is mine.

The hero was always clever, and he was never rich. He would fight giants to win prizes, beat the odds with his cleverness, and violently kill the witches and giants he came across. And as my father told the story, we would sing a little tune, so we all felt a part of it. We would whistle and hum, and I still remember it to this day. I will always remember it. It sings in my bones.

The singing was always loudest in the parts where the hero would kill the giants and the witches, after they had been outsmarted. He would take out his axe or his sword and chop off their head, rip out their eyes, tear off their scalp. He would do such devious things. It entertained us greatly. 

Some days, I would be so tired from the previous day's work, or a beating or an illness, and I would not want to wake up. I would want to lie down and give up my soul to God. The only thing that would move me was the memories of the previous night, of my father's heroes killing those nasty giants with an axe driven right into the soft spot of their skulls, of how my sisters and brothers and I hummed and sang louder and louder, that building tune, always rising but never breaking. I would imagine my blood beating with it. I would imagine it in my heart. And then I would get up, and do my work for the day.

When Emil brought us to Paris, I was amazed to find the tune was here as well. Shopkeepers sang it under their breath. Factory workers whistled it. Beggars called it out. I have never heard it on the lips of one of _your_ kind, fancy dressed and knowing your letters. It is the song of my people. They sing it in the political clubs. They sing it in the taverns. They sing it where you do not hear it.

We sing it. We have not stopped singing it. We never will.

I remember the first time I heard it in chorus. It was when I truly fell in love. Not with a man or with a woman or even God, but something greater than myself. It was in Versailles. I do not know the year. Probably you have heard of it? We all came together, we women, and we showed the damned King and Queen our minds. It was as though my life was a haze before then, but the curtain had been lifted. 

I was angry, of course I was. Emil had died, beaten to death by a drunken soldier. No one cared. My little sister Marie had fallen ill, and we were all too poor to get a doctor or a proper burial. My little brother Luc had disappeared in the night. I never found him. All these things, I had heard whispers of their source. Men and women would hum that the way things were did not have to be. That we poor did not have to live ignored. That we were not meant to live this way. 

When I marched with those women, I heard it all. The tune was stronger than it had ever been. It was no longer hummed or whispered. We sang it in chorus. A sea of voices! All of us, together, fighting. The anger in me boiled into something else entirely, something greater, a purpose beyond myself.

In the fury of the moment, there was violence. Of course there was. I think I knocked my head, for I saw another woman marching among us, but she was... she was perfect, but she was also wrong. I do not have your scholar's words to describe it. I am sure you will take it back to England and fill it with poetry, eh?

No. You will throw it in the river.

The woman was not like us. She was haggard and worn. Her body was blackened, but not like the poor Americans kept in bondage in San Domingo; it was _burnt_. She walked on bleeding legs, hips jerking like her movements were not her own. No, not like a puppet, but like what made her... _her_... had been taken from herself. Like it had from all of us. 

In her hand, she held a most beautiful whistle, and I realized with slowness it was made of bone. Or... perhaps I always knew. Just as I knew her other hands beat a drum in the tune of our march. Just as I knew her other hands saluted. Just as I knew her other mouth sang with us, while the other called out orders. Just as I knew she was rotten, dead and dying, healed and healing, marching with us.

I saw her, and she was perfect. You will not believe me, but I knew it in my soul. Nothing was wrong with her.

I wanted to ask her a thousand things. I wanted to follow her forever. She played the tune so beautifully. How could anything ever compare. One of her faces looked at me, and she smiled. One of the eyes was streaming with tears. One of the eyes was streaming with something else.

She did not speak to me. I could not speak. She only grinned, and I knew it was a blessing. 

I lost her in the crowd. Or maybe I did hit my head, as I said earlier. I had the most awful headache, the morning after. And my little brother Jacques told me I had come home singing, but it was the tune we all knew. They had only worried when I woke with little memory of returning. Everything after that woman's smile... I do not remember it.

But why should you believe? You are sneering already. I can tell.

I had never seen the Princess before. Most of us had not. Why would we? I was cheered to hear she had been arrested, and cheered to hear the Jacobins were finally dealing with matters. I joined the crowd again to hear their judgement. Truth be told-- and I am telling you the truth, every word-- I was searching for that woman again. The tune of my Papa was her tune as well. It all flowed together, an endless rhythm, a dance, eternal. I wanted to live in that song forever. It was the loudest in crowds, and I was quick to add my voice to any. The loudest crowds, sometimes I felt I got a glimpse of her, or felt her near. Sometimes I heard her bone whistle, which has a very distinct sound. After the Princess died, I hear it louder than ever. 

It was the loudest near prisons. I think others heard it to, but I did not ask. It was something to be savored, not discussed, picked at, analyzed. Your kind will not understand it. You still cannot hear it, can you?

It brought us to the prisons, or maybe it was there because we were there. The order does not matter. It is all one, like the dirt in my fingernails, like my last brother Luc going to join the fight in Valmy, like you and your pen. Don't you see it? All of this is the new world. All of this is the beginning of something new and beautiful. You would not understand it. There is no place for you in our world.

I awoke one morning, and heard that bone whistle down to my soul. It was at the Rue du Roi de Sicile. I was not surprised to find myself at another prison. I was not surprised to find myself joining another crowd. All of this was natural to me, as natural as breathing, as natural as the truth, as the divine. There was a tribunal at this prison, which excited me. I have seen many wrongs in my life, and never had they seen justice. I no longer think of myself in needing personal justice. I need justice for my people. When Jacques was crushed to death under the carriage of a fleeing noble, I was bereaved, but I also knew that noble would see justice done some other way. Even if they would never know Jacques' name, they would know the crimes they had committed. 

This tribunal was swift. They metered out their justice quickly. I liked that. They brought prisoners, asked them to denounce the King and Queen, asked them what other questions they needed, and quick as that, the prisoners were either released, or given over to us.

I did not take part in the worst of it. Not at first. I was in the wrong part of the crowd, and it was mostly men. I admit, I wore men's clothes then, as I do now. I do not need skirts, and this is a time of running and fighting. Emil's clothes fit me fine. 

Eventually, the song changed. The tune grew. The crowd shifted, almost like a dance. We all moved as one. We were all one. 

They brought out a woman, unremarkable to me, except for her words. 

The tribunal asked, "Who are you?"

And this frail, shivering woman in only a little white dress to hide her modesty, answered, "Marie Thérèse Louise, Princess of Savoy."

I knew of her. I had heard the rumors of her and the Queen. We all did. The tune grew louder, a persistent hum, coloring the very air with its beauty.

The tribunal asked, "Your employment?"

And the Princess answered, "Superintendent of the Household to the Queen."

The tribunal asked her if she knew of the plots of the wicked Queen, and of course she said no. She was a liar; I could see it on her face. In the same way I had always and suddenly knew the whistle was made of bone, in the same way I could hear it then, loud as a rooster in the morning.

They asked her the simplest thing. Swear to liberty. Swear to Equality. Swear to the freedom of France from the tyranny of the King and his wicked Queen.

She swore with a liar's eyes to the former, but this tiny, frail, stupid woman with her soft hands and cow's eyes, refused to denounce that damned Queen.

The tribunal spoke. "Let Madame be set at liberty."

We knew what this meant. The poor little Princess was shoved forward us, and only then could she see the bodies of those who had already met their fate. I heard that whistle again, that joyous tune. I remembered my Papa's heroes, with their axes and their blood. I do not know where the pike came from. I had not been carrying it before then, or I don't remember. I understand now. It was that great woman's blessing.

Like one of my Papa's heroes, I struck the Princess. 

Blood poured from her head, and she fell with a surprised cry. She did not understand; this was not her world anymore. Blood mixed with her hair, which had been pinned up, and revealed a letter she had been hiding from it. Later I would learn it was from the damned Queen herself. At the time, I only knew she was a worse spy, a worse counter-revolutionary, than we all knew her to be. The council had spoken. She was a traitor to France. 

The whistle was so loud, I could hear nothing else. I wish it could always be that way.

One of my fellows moved in, and struck her with a pairing knife. It must have been all he had. I rounded on her with my pike again. We tore her flesh, rendered her to only a series of bloody holes. Her beauty and her grace and her gentle breeding did not save her from true justice. 

And we sang. Oh, we sang that beautiful song. I could hear the woman from before, and I did not know where or how, but I knew it was her voice. She moved us along, and each strike was like another move in an elegant dance. All of us knew the steps. All of us but that little woman in white.

So that is how the princess died. What else do you wish to know? Do you want me to cry and tear my hair out? Do you want me to regret it? No, I will not. I will not give you the satisfaction, and I feel no ounce of regret. I told you. Everything I said is true. I will not lie to calm your gentle heart.

My last surviving family has marched off to war, to defend our country against foreign invaders. We all sang as he marched away. You have been in Paris for so long, now, and you still do not know the tune. It is strange and sad, I think.

Well? 

Do you want to hear it?

___

Statement ends.

Another piece of history, I suppose. After some reading on the subject, the events described by this nameless woman seem to be the famous September Massacres. I suppose when one is in the midst of such things, you aren't politely informed what they are to be called. Indeed, the 'Princess' this woman describes matches rather exactly with the details as we know them of the Princess of Lambelle's death. 

I do wonder at the poor soul who took this statement. I can find no information on how it was taken, or why, or by whom. I cannot imagine an Englishman in Paris fairing well at this time, much less one who clearly failed to hide his, shall we say, origins. Obviously, there is no information on how these well-worn pages found their way to the Archive, though they seem to have been taken with some... intent.

It's something of a minor miracle they survived the years, given the poor state of their keeping.

The narrator of this little tale describes her brother leaving to fight in Valmy. Something of that, and the words the woman spoke, reminded me of an old... where was it. Goethe, that's right. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He was at Valmy, I believe. On the losing side, actually. What did he say, here it is- "Here and today, a new epoch in the history of the world has begun, and you can boast you were present at its birth."

End recording.


End file.
